I was happy Monday, and not bored. I am just so used to going into a dissociative state to avoid pain or possible pain, and it is a hard habit to break. Today I seem to be happy again and it has to do with having an interesting collaboration at work.

How to escape all the painful associations I have with academic work? How to quell the longings for my other interests, which have, furthermore, no painful associations? They do not arise because of not having an interesting job or an interesting place to live, although I think one should not sacrifice both. The problem is working in painful atmospheres, laden with tedium and fraught with strife, stress over finances, and awareness that the usual ways to handle these kinds of things are insufficient.

I have decided that it is impossible to rise above all circumstances and that a complete, virtual atmosphere must be constructed each day. I am not actually tired of research or writing or even teaching, but I am tired of blatant obstruction and also of all exhortations to sacrifice and penitence.

Secretos y Saberes

1. While writing here is an excellent exercise for my English style and for writing as such, it is bad for my style in Spanish. Therefore some posts may be in languages other than English.

2. Corybantic, rather anarchical and possibly Liangian, this blog is opposed to everything I find mean. It criticizes things you may hold dear. It resists authoritarianism and received ideas. It vaporizes Fascists.

3. This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.